Word Games
by CaideSin
Summary: I'm my brother's snakeskin, Mother.


**Word Games**

Desire pulls that face on, the one with the  
tight-lip knife-curling warrior wired on  
slow-rolling ecstasy face.

"You cannot seduce seduction, little sister."

Delirium smiles, makes her own face, the  
melting dripping absentmindedly endearing,  
the unmindful to the shapes she creates in  
the long lean lines of her fears face.

"Did I tell you how nice you look today,  
Desire?" she giggles, trembling through  
each of her pores and rolling backwards like  
a bug, like a goldfish armored-armadillo.

Desire keeps that face, but hisherits eyes  
flash amber-excited, twisting like a jagged  
ball-n-chain of lightning.

"You do not _need_," Desire purrs, "to  
tell me, Del," and hesheit could mean any  
number of things by this, could mean  
Delirium, could mean Delight, could mean  
_Delectable_, and that would be well  
into Desire's language (hesheit speaks  
those words with that labia pink tongue  
and lips like the fertile, who bleed  
what for their emptiness).

(Delicate, Del-delapidate mindspace  
wholesale on delapidate mindspace  
myspace-yourspace invasion of _space_  
whose mineyours, fiat money, you see  
—sale, sale wholesale on _your_ sale)

Desire's face is close and reeks of peaches,  
Desire's eyes are like maple syrup and  
Delirium trembles with the effort it takes not  
to lick sisterbrotherother _right_ up.

"I look nice every day," Desire breathes  
across the flustered petalfish of Del's  
(Dele, Delete, all those things come in time  
too much too much Delirium or Delight or  
Desire, Desire can be too much, too much,  
too much) lips, her chapped lips set into the  
shoreline contours of her face.

"You…" Del murmurs in return, turning the  
many multitudes of words over in her mind,  
fingers tarantella stepping up  
sisterbrotherother Desire's white skin  
_(exposed in that way that is not quite  
exposure at all, as natural as rain and fall)_.  
"It doesn't hurt…" It's a lie, it hurts so much  
to look at Desire's sleek hair and Desire's  
_plastique&plasticine_ manicured features  
staring out with the haughty heavy-lidded  
relaxation of an ancient dragon and hesheit  
is a soldier again, dangerous beyond the  
words at ladylittle Del's (Deletive,  
Deleterious, _Delight_) disposal.

"It doesn't hurt," she whispers with the  
sounds of her glossalia, the pitch wandering  
across the inflections of the white road to  
bedlam, "to say it anyway, Desire. It doesn't  
hurt anyone but me and maybe I'm not  
counting myself anymore, it doesn't hurt  
you to hear it." Delirium has begun to smile;  
it spreads like an infection through each of  
her piecesparts.

Desire's fingers curl _(serpents, serpents oh  
the beauty of serpents, mother, mother,  
mother knows, though Eve won't talk about  
it; not anymore)_ around hisherits sister's  
birdbones. She should partake of more  
victuals, be they foods or fears, Desire does  
not care.

"I want to indulge you," Desire finds  
hisheritself murmuring into the curls behind  
Del's _(Delacrymation, she finds herself  
troubled by this so often it may as well be  
her name, it may well be, she thinks)_ ear.

The colors shudder across the spectrums,  
settling into the far black _(.045 percent,  
Delirium hears from the deep, minutia is a  
mania all its own)_.

"Indulge?" Delirium replies and shivers,  
falling to cracklingbright stardust in Desire's  
palms. Desire cups her there, puckers  
hisherit lips and blows her back into the air  
like the very beautiful vision of Delight she  
once wasis.

Delirium does not feel it again, not  
even for a second. Delight is a long gone  
vision, just as constant and real as Delate  
and Delay (delayed by your delirium  
at your delight, indulgence can be that way,  
funny that way, too much of anything is too  
much and too much delight in desire is…)

Delirium tastes of champagne and soap  
bubbles when their mouths meet and  
Desire's tongue presses the ivory tusks of  
her teeth, invasive and violating.

"Delectation," Desire kisses, licking her lips  
for the salt of her tears.

"Delegitimize," Deliriums answers in the  
scared voice of a child, it is a second  
skin-nature, coming to the fore in splotchy  
paints on the horizon. She's always so  
filthy; caked with the dyingdeath  
of the vertical dreams of the too-frightened-  
to-finish-what-_they-begin_  
(brother, brother, o brother, where art thou,  
to save me from what your minions wreak  
upon me(rmaids sing their siren  
songs across my forehead) brother,  
brother) .

She giggles (her giggles sound like  
champagne and soap bubbles, popping wet  
in the air. Desire thinks hesheit likes the  
taste of it) and collapses, boneless and  
many-legged into sisterbrotherother  
Desire's swelteringly tepid embrace.

An octopus garden, they sprout jeweled  
wings in many colors and Desire watches  
their flight. Whimsy as much hisherits as it  
is tiny blond & brunet & carrot-colored  
Delirium (Deletory, Delactation, an  
unsuccessful process, she still craves the  
morphine-static power of what was once her  
own name, Delight is dead, Delirium is  
craving, shaking, sweating, for all these  
years).

"Come," Desire prompts in the rosy voice of  
certainly-never-love.

"You…" Delirium garbles from the beaked  
mouth of a slimy purple octopus. "You love  
me? Will you love me, Desire?"

(Anger is a piece and part, interchangeable,  
indeed, of Desire's framework-face and it is  
beautiful there as all things are beautiful  
there, but anger, the conDescending anger,  
is _beautiful_ there)

Hesheit cradles sweet-sister in hisherits arms,  
snowwhite arms, pure beyond the meaning  
of Desire's _purity_ (of all the ridiculous  
notions, really Dormouse, will you never  
learn a thing from within the confines of  
your tetsubin; squeal and pipe all day, read a  
book my lovely mousymouse friend).

"I will take you to my heart." It is the only  
language Desire knows; the only pact and  
promise that can be made. Their  
understanding of one another is as cyclical  
as the meaning of my Love and Desire (you  
cannot seduce seduction, did I tell you how  
nice you look today, that sharpness, that  
abashed mindlessness, that Delaminated  
smile; split into thin layers of uncertainty  
and--).

The world pulses and Delirium is indecisive  
in shape, a deli of fleshy features and the  
immaterial is immaterial in Desire's world  
(the form of the meaning of the name of the  
last of the first of the darkest of the ignis  
fatuus is nothing here, nothing here, and that  
is… would hesheit appreciate…? Desire  
never appreciates what hesheit does not  
_appreciate_).

"I will love you the only way I can," Desire  
decides in that voice, that sharp sneering  
voice which sounds like slick sex and is as  
such because Desire is the only one who can  
touch the places where Delight used to be  
and hisherits fingers burn her like an _infection_  
and Delirium feels so dirty, writhing and  
aroused (in this the only the _only_ way,  
Desire's fingers deep deep inside the darkest  
Corners of her mind (and Desire's fingers  
bleed) tracing the shattered edges, mind the  
glass dear, don't _cut_ yourself).

It is good, the meaning of a kiss of their  
mouths beyond the material meaning of the  
arbitrary shapes they take (them damn  
philosophical Dualists would be proud of  
you today Del, reconciling that madness,  
that stallion madness, rushing up and down  
your spine).

"I love _you_, Desire," Delirium feels she  
should assert because Desire is both brother  
and sister and Desire is both family and  
stranger and Desire is both lover and enemy  
and it is not a _lie_ and sometimes that is all  
Delirium (Delaceration, her _heart_, she still  
has one you see, perhaps Dream likes to  
pretend he has hidden his away, and perhaps  
Desire has torn hishersits out to make this  
room the room is as much inside of  
Desire's chest as it is not, Delirium knows  
and maybe Despair sinks her fishhooks in  
far too deep into such a helpless little  
muscle, but Del's heart tears itself apart, into  
bleeding confetti pieces she sprinkles over  
Bellingham) can ever seem to hope for.

"I am always loved," Desire can be too  
much sometimes, too vicious sometimes, too  
dangerous sometimes, all these things all the  
time, Destiny will tell you that if you ask.  
Del won't ask him that, she knows it on her  
own, the way her skin knows all the things  
anyone has ever asked her bigbrother.

Abandon; child and height of Desire and  
Delirium and sweetyoung Del reaches and  
wonders what it would really be like to be a  
mother _(it is so very much the same, in the  
arms of the serpent; Eve doesn't talk about  
it, not anymore)_.

"Yes," Del says, her hair streaming a long  
conked red over the curve of her back, "Yes,  
you are always loved."

It hurts so many to say this, it hurts innocents,  
and it hurts Del (_Delirium_ and maybe also  
_Delight_ in the past, which always holds you  
down no matter how much you _don't  
remember_).

"And I love you," Delirium says. "I love  
you."

She breathes against the cruel curve of  
Desire's throat, naked breath, open and  
wanting _(aching breath, she is always  
aching, hungering for the sense she lost in  
caterpillar smoke)_ breath; her breath smells  
of peppermint ice cream and Desire smiles.

(A dark understanding smile that makes Del  
feel _safe_ in the naked embrace of too many  
of their bodies; Desire will not change the  
way the others do, Desire is already the  
brambling meaning of confusion and there is  
a comforting surety to this undulation.)

They kiss again and Delirium's saliva is  
peach tea _(you smell of peaches, Desire, you  
smell of fleshy bleeding peaches)_ and Desire  
touches her, irritates and soothes all the  
places she needs to be touched (indulgence…  
_indulgence_, the birthright of any older sibling…)

Delirium falls asleep on the velvetduvet, but slips  
from Desire's embrace as the dreams _(brother?  
brother? where for art thou brother? do you  
know what they do? to me?)_ pull her back  
beneath the black waves. She should eat  
more. She should rest more. She should stay  
longer. She is gone.

Desire stalks cold heart&hearth stone and  
smokes against the urge to give pursuit.  
Pitch is sticky that way and the smoke fritters  
itself away on the harsh winds,

_"Did I tell you how nice you look today,  
Desire?"

* * *

_

**Standard Disclaimers.**

* * *


End file.
